Insomnia's night.
Crickets gnaw at the stars.
A linoleum moon
Rolls on the sea.
I track creaking floorboards
To refrigerated light.
Milk and cold potatoes.
Memory
Fumbles day's detritus.
It's cold:
The sky is frozen to the windowpane.

At day's end, a lumpy bed;
A lightbulb
Burning like Guernica.
Your body burrows into my blankets;
Your head
Butts at my flank,
And your textures
Predict the sun.
Your throat
Purrs.

Violet is the hunter's light,
The last light of the dying day,
The last light
Down by the evening waterhole
Where prey and predators gather.
We are tuned to optimum
Precisely for this light.
Optimized for survival.
Animals from the grasslands of Africa,
We see the dying light of day
Almost to blackness.
Evolved to survive to nightfall.

So they're leaving now, for good —
His son with his decibel music,
His trailblazing machine,
His brazen girl
Immune to the privilege of pity.

A girl and a boy
Holding hands for public inspection.
In an upstairs room,
Middle-age
Sweating toward failure.
Two dogs in heat.
An old woman
Buying potatoes —
The dirt starves her tapeworm.
A kid on a bicycle
Licking a hypodermic.
The hangman having lunch
On a construction site.
A poster:
The end of the Dow-Jones index is nigh.
The sky:
A million times over-exposed.